The business side of the depot

At most railroad depots, several kinds of business might be done, from selling passenger tickets and checking baggage, to working with shippers and consignees regarding cars being loaded or delivered. In this post, I want to address the latter part, the freight side.

Most SP enthusiasts will know the very informative film the company made, This Is My Railroad. At one point in the film, the narrator mentions that a local agent was the railroad’s face in that town. In brief clips, the film shows an agent in shirtsleeves selling a ticket to a passenger (upper view below), and working with a freight customer (who appears to be signing a freight bill), lower view. 

We all know the passenger side, with the waiting room and ticket counter. But where is that other counter? Below is a floor plan of this part of a standard SP depot interior (from a Jean Guy Dube drawing). 

In the drawing, the waiting room and passenger ticket counter are at right. At the left side of the office, with its own outside door, is the long counter for freight business. The operator’s desk is in the bay window at drawing bottom. 

The outside of such a depot, in this case Common Standard 22, is shown in a photo from Goleta, California (Clark Bauer collection). Next to the office door is the bill box, indicated with the arrow, where waybills and other paperwork could be exchanged with crews when the agent was not on duty. 

I don’t have an interior view of a freight counter in an SP depot, but below is a good version from a Chicago & North Western depot. 

Probably the fellow with the bow tie is the agent, and the man in the background is the operator. The others are freight clerks with their ledgers. At far left is likely a customer.

This is where those Bills of Lading were signed, and waybills typed, and it’s where waybills for arriving loads supplied the information to began the writing of freight bills. And this is whee a local train crew would come to talk to the agent and find out what work they had in town.

This is what I meant in referring to the “business side” of the depot. Certainly from the Depression onward, this was the side that made significant money for the railroad. I often feel that we as modelers don’t do enough to represent how this side of railroading worked. But I keep writing, and presenting talks, to try and remedy that.

Tony Thompson